THE MOVIE AS A WORLD POWER
IN a very important particular the title first chosen for this little book was a misnomer, a fact that grows more apparent to the author as he approaches the end of the task he has essayed. “A Biography of the Movie,” the name I had selected for my projected volume, implies, at this period of the evolution of the picture screen, either too much or too little—too much if it suggests a comprehensive history of a life that has but recently begun, too little if it fails to show that the facts and figures available regarding the development of the motion picture demonstrate the dynamics of the screen as a medium for racial intercommunication. There came, of course, to the writer the temptation to dwell in detail upon the romantic story of the rise of the movie from insignificance to world-dominion, from poverty to affluence, from a plaything to a power, to mention names made famous by the screen, to maintain, in short, the same attitude of mind toward the cinema and all its works that impelled Merton of the Movies to idealize the new art and industry whether he looked at them through a telescope or a microscope. That a work based upon the more personal aspects of the movie’s evolution can be both readable and timely has been proved of late by the success achieved in book form by the personal reminiscences of one of the leading producers in the motion picture realm. But had I succumbed to the inclination to give what may be called the lure that lies in gossip to this little volume, I should have taken merely the path of least resistance and have left wholly undone the real task I have essayed, namely, that of getting an idea, a prophecy, a promise, a possibility—whatsoever you may be pleased to call it—into the minds of my readers, to the end that the project referred to in the first chapter of this book may receive eventually the consideration to which I, with all due modesty, believe it is entitled.
In other words, I have been endeavoring to explain briefly how the toy kinetoscope of a quarter of a century ago by becoming a universal medium of expression has made what men and nations say to each other in this new world-language of crucial significance to the future of civilization.
Now just here we come face to face with the most significant, the most tragically important, feature of the tremendous subject with which we are dealing. Is Man, triumphant at last over the evils that befell him at the Tower of Babel, possessing for the first time in his racial career a universal language, actually in possession of soul-stirring truths that, reaching the race at large, shall overcome the powers of darkness menacing our modern civilization? Let me repeat the concluding sentence of the preceding chapter: “While the screen may minimize eventually the evils springing from a world-wide confusion of tongues, it can permanently eradicate those evils only by the dissemination of a message that shall exert an uplifting influence upon the perturbed soul of humanity.”
Shall Christ or Cæsar, idealism or materialism, altruism or animosities, progress or reaction dominate the screen? The importance of the answer that the future makes to this query can not be conceivably over-estimated. To repeat an assertion I made in a preceding chapter, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are struggling for domination over the soul of the screen and the issue of the conflict is still in abeyance.
A timely truth finding lodgment in the perturbed souls of men might conceivably save the race from destruction. By means of a modern invention an idea, opportunely dropped from the clouds by heroic airmen behind the German lines, destroyed the morale of the cohorts of reaction and brought victory to the Allied arms. Two things were here essential to success—the message itself and the medium for its dissemination. Of the two, the message is, of course, infinitely the more important. But Wilson’s words, at that special crisis, would have been futile had they not been given wings by Wright.
Civilization stands in sore need of a message of a unifying and peace-begetting nature. The screen offers it a medium whereby such a message could be carried to the ends of the earth, to be known of all mankind through the Esperanto of the Eye. But whence shall this message come? By what authority, by what sanction, shall it force itself upon the minds and hearts and souls of all men? If the screen falls eventually wholly into the control of demagogues, a medium for enlightenment that might save the race from the threatening evils of the future will not merely fail to fulfill its highest mission but will become the most powerful weapon of those who would undermine and presently destroy existing civilization.
As an uplifting, educational, civilizing force, the movie appears to be approaching the parting of the ways. As has been shown in preceding chapters, it has vastly enlarged its scope and possibilities as an influence, direct or indirect, upon the daily lives of millions of human beings. It has of late solved the major mechanical problems that confronted it. At its present rate of progress, the cinema will soon become more powerful as an influence upon the minds of the masses than are the newspaper, the novel and the play taken together.
For the sun never sets upon the screen! Day and night, in all parts of the civilized, and an increasing portion of the uncivilized, globe the motion picture is making its imprint upon the minds and souls of countless millions of men, women and children. It has taken possession of a polyglot world and is speaking daily to the human race in a tongue that is understood as readily on the Congo as at Cambridge. But what is it saying? “Ah, there’s the rub!” Is the screen merely a mirror in which Man looks upon his own face and turns away heedless of what his countenance might have taught him? Has the race finally found a way to that self-knowledge which might mean its eventual salvation only to misuse, as its wont has been, its newest medium for advancement? Can nothing be learned from the screen by the restless, harassed, apprehensive millions of the earth that shall make this first universal method of communication worthy of the possibilities for world-wide uplift that it possesses?
The answer to these queries depends largely upon your personal point of view, upon the philosophy of life which dominates your mental processes. If you are influenced by that widely-accepted generalization to the effect that “human nature never changes” you will not be inclined to take seriously our contention that by forcing Man to observe and study, by means of the screen, the blunders, idiocies, crimes and tragedies of his past he may be forced eventually to repent and reform, to make of his future something less reprehensible than his past has been. But human nature is not fixed—it is fluid. It has changed, and it is always in the process of changing. In fact, the time may not be far distant when not only the individual but the race at large, hitherto at the mercy of endocrinal glands, will find in the laboratory methods whereby thyroids and pituitaries and adrenals and the other chemical arbiters of the fate of men and nations may be so dominated by science that human nature will not merely change with heartbreaking slowness for the better but will spring at a bound into its supermanhood.
The above fantastic possibility is not, at this stage of the new biology, to be taken very seriously, but the suggestion thrown out serves, at least, to call attention to the fact that never before in the history of the race has Man been more concerned in his destiny than he is to-day, more inclined to turn away from old methods of solving the riddle of his being, methods that have long played him false, and to turn hopefully to new teachers, new sciences, new hopes, new horizons. And, lo, at this great moment, when, as never before, Man craves all knowledge that he may know himself, chance—if such there be—has vouchsafed to him the one thing needful for a racial self-revelation, namely, a universal language.
As I wrote the above, this morning’s newspapers were making the following announcement to their readers:
Plans for carrying on the work toward international peace by the Carnegie Endowment in Europe, Inc., became known yesterday when Justice Guy of the New York Supreme Court approved an application for the incorporation of that organization. Among the objects to be attained by the corporation are: To advance the cause of peace among nations, to hasten the abolition of international war, and to encourage and promote peaceful settlement of international differences. In particular to promote a thorough and scientific investigation and study of the causes of war and of the practical methods to prevent and avoid it. To diffuse information and to educate public opinion regarding the causes, nature and effect of war, and means for its prevention and avoidance. To cultivate friendly feelings between the inhabitants of the different countries and to increase the knowledge and understanding of each other by the several nations, etc.
Praiseworthily lofty and noble as the projects outlined above may be, it is no disparagement of their promoters to assert that there is nothing startlingly new in the design they have at heart. In all generations there have been altruists who envisaged a world freed from war, but always has it happened that they have been aroused from dreams by the thunder of the guns. From one point of view at least, the saddest of countless sad sights in Europe after August 2, 1914, was the Peace Palace at the Hague.
But if there is nothing especially novel in what we may call the Carnegie creed as above worded, there is this to be said for the peace promoters of to-day that they have one great advantage over all their predecessors, even over those of ten years ago. A new medium for preventing Man from repeating his former errors and crimes is, by leaps and bounds, reaching a marvellous state of development. There is every reason to believe that the message above referred to, which a blood-stained race sorely needs, is that which the Carnegie Foundation is desirous of bringing to the minds and souls of men. But have the powers of evil and unrest, the promoters of international jealousies and hatreds, selfish demagogues craving always more power that they may make the worse appear the better reason, out-generaled the forces of righteousness and placed the screen in bondage to their pernicious designs? If they have, and the Esperanto of the Eye is to speak for Mr. Hyde instead of Dr. Jekyll, then has another great calamity befallen a race that had no need of more.